


1928: The Invalid and the Coward

by ThatClumsyGirl



Series: Home of the Free [6]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M, aftermath of WW1, dealing with grief, memories of violence and death, offstage characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 20:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20784527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatClumsyGirl/pseuds/ThatClumsyGirl
Summary: Thank you everyone so much for reading these and your lovely comments :)Here is another one finally finished. This one is very important to me and to the characters. I always thought they should've done more on the War/the Aftermath in the TV-show.And it's got a poem again! It was a hard decision between this and any other by Siegfried Sassoon. Apart from him, I randomly read a lot more war-time poetry while writing this (Wilfred Owen, Laurence Binyon, etc.) found online at poetrysoup.com





	1928: The Invalid and the Coward

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you everyone so much for reading these and your lovely comments :)  
Here is another one finally finished. This one is very important to me and to the characters. I always thought they should've done more on the War/the Aftermath in the TV-show.  
And it's got a poem again! It was a hard decision between this and any other by Siegfried Sassoon. Apart from him, I randomly read a lot more war-time poetry while writing this (Wilfred Owen, Laurence Binyon, etc.) found online at poetrysoup.com
    
    
    _I Stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:_
    _When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead._
     
    _And my slow heart said, 'You must kill, you must kill:_
    _'Soldier, soldier, morning is red'._
    
    _On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace_
    _I stared for a while through the thin cold rain._
     
    _'O lad that I loved, there is rain on your face,_
    _'And your eyes are blurred and sick like the plain.'_
    
    _I stood with the Dead._
    _They were dead; they were dead;_
    _My heart and my head beat a march of dismay: _
    _And gusts of the wind came dulled by the guns._
    
    _'Fall in!' I shouted; 'Fall in for your pay!'_
    
    _(Siegfried Sassoon – I stood with the Dead)_
      
    
    

11 November 1928

It is an unassuming rainy Sunday, filled with the raising of flags, a parade and the ringing of bells to let everyone know that on this day ten years ago, after four years of horror and carnage, Europe agreed to stop killing itself. Millions of men set out to fight each other and millions never returned home or, if they did, not entirely intact. Two soldiers are just tiny dots in the picture of the Great War, two faces in the crowd, the same as everyone else, meeting and parting in the tide of events. Meaningless, except to each other. In light of everything that happened ten years ago, it seems like a miracle that Thomas and Edward are here, holding hands, sitting on the porch of their house hidden behind the hibiscus bush on this slightly chilly evening, meaning the world to each other.

“It feels less real every day, doesn't it? Like it only ever happened in our nightmares”, Edward says. They talk about the war sometimes but never properly, only in passing. Tonight, they will. Edward has conjured up a bottle of wine from an undisclosed source to help them along.

“A few weeks ago, I spent two full days not remembering anything about it, not even at night” Today is different. Though Thomas has stayed away from the parades and celebrations, all day he has been thinking about it, even speaking about it at times, to the 'kids' at the hotel who had been too young back then to truly understand what was happening. They are adults now, with jobs and lives and opinions, and they don't remember the War – it disturbs him in a way he can't quite fathom.

“The other day someone asked me where I knew you from and I could explain it without drowning in my memories for the first time”

“We've really come a long way in the last ten years”

“I didn't think I could be happy ever again and now look at where we are … But it makes me sad to think about all the people who weren't so lucky. So many lives, so much wasted potential. They could've achieved things and loved and had children” The grief of a whole generation seems to resonate in Edward's voice.

“So much was lost there … Did many of your friends fight?” Thomas has always wondered but never dared to ask exactly how much loss Edward had suffered, having been a man with a healthy social-life and a place in his heart for everyone.

“The Oxford boys all did, it was a question of honour. And most of the men I knew back home did, too. Few of them returned” No doubt he is thinking about the young man he loved back then. “No-one I know was completely untouched by it, everyone lost someone”

“I'd thought I couldn't lose, you know. I didn't have any friends or contact with my family, but I made friends among the other soldiers pretty quickly” Thomas met so many people just _because_ of the war, not just Edward, connections he'd never have had otherwise. It was like being in a parallel world and he had written to Downton quite often not to completely lose touch with the other side, in case the war ended the next day and he'd have to go back to his old life, alone and untouched. “I found comrades, then I watched them die … It was new for me, I'd never been able to fit in. I tried to imagine what it would be like in a time of peace, when I could keep those comrades, but I couldn't see it. It was like we all had made one of those mistakes that changed everything and the only way to fix it would be to turn back time”

“I know the feeling exactly. The first time you breathe the air of a battlefield is like stepping through a door and you can't go back. I thought about doing normal things like sleeping in an actual bed, reading a book in the garden or sitting on a train and it broke my heart. I knew it would never be normal again. Even if the war ended and I did go back to Oxford and sat in the same spot in the library or went fishing in the Thames with my mates, it would never feel right again, because the world had changed and become darker and I had changed with it. Then, of course, I was injured. But even without that, there was no way back because … I had killed people. Imagine that. Pretty much every man of our generation did”

As much as Thomas tries, he can't see Edward's gentle hands holding a gun. “It was kill or be killed. Once you're caught in the tangles of war, there's no way round it”

“Well, you never did”

“But I would've if I'd had to, have no illusions about that … Do you feel guilty about it?” Thomas had learned on the battlefield and later in the hospital that there were pretty much two kinds of volunteers: the ones who did it for honour and the ones who did it for glory. Edward was one of the former, he'd known that straight away. (Thomas himself hadn't done it for _glory_ exactly but he had hoped to gain something from it)

“I do, sometimes. I see the soldiers in my head, running towards me, coming so close I could see their eyes. The fear in their eyes, the same fear I felt. But it's not like I woke up in the morning with the intention of murdering as many men as I could every day. I did what I had to do in order to survive and to help the man next to me survive as well. There is the one I shot in the back, I'm still ashamed of that, but I've come to see it all as a necessary evil. I kept thinking, the more I go on and work for it, the sooner the war will end. That doesn't mean it doesn't make me feel sick to think about it”

“How many times did you … do what you had to do?” It has slipped out before Thomas can think about it and realises this goes too far, even today when they've agreed to not hold back on questions and answers. “I'm sorry, forget I said that. I don't need to know”

Edward takes a large swig of his wine. “It's alright, I think you deserve to know, now that we're talking about it … But there isn't a satisfactory answer I can give you, because I don't know. I never counted them, or anything. There was so much chaos going on and the only way was forward, there was no time to check how many dead bodies you had left behind or if you'd just wounded them” He plays with his glass to conceal the shaking of his hands and Thomas wishes he could take the question back. “I think, any man who can answer this with an exact number is either a psychopath or a liar”

“That's probably true … We raked through the trail of dead bodies you guys left behind to see if there were any survivors. Carried them out, sometimes lost them on the way” It is hard to imagine that place ever being anything else than a battlefield, before or after, to picture grass growing on it, farmers working on it or bare-footed children running across it in the summer. If anything, it is a graveyard, scattered with wooden crosses marking shallow graves, the only colours a greyish brown, dusty green and the red of the poppies growing on them.

“I've no idea how you did it, it must've been so hard … I once carried another soldier out of the line of fire after he'd been shot in the leg. I didn't really know him except from sight and that his name was Stanley. He fell down in front of me, so I put him over my shoulder and brought him back behind a cart for shelter. When I set him down I realised a stray bullet had hit him in the head in the meantime. That completely broke me. To think that you did this day after day … I admire that more than you can probably imagine. And all the Death you must've seen …”

“To be honest, the injured were way, way worse than the dead. Once they're dead, and all in their uniforms, they were less like people. They became part of the background and the big picture. The injured, though, you couldn't look past them, they were screaming and … and begging” Thomas daren't even blink, he knows the second he closes his eyes, the pictures will take over. Edward pulls him close and holds him like he will never let go. It helps Thomas remember that it is over. He can try and look at it like it happened to someone else. “Often, we had to leave one man behind in favour of another, judging by which of them was more likely to survive his injuries. I felt so helpless all the time. I didn't want to feel like that, so I shut everything out, until I couldn't anymore, and snapped, and my only thought was to get out. You know what happened next” Thomas automatically straightens the glove he wears over his scarred hand every time he leaves the house. It still hurts when he's overstrained it or when the weather changes; sometimes there's a random twinge in it when he's stressed or feeling low. “I've never been so frightened in my life. I wasn't thinking about the people I left behind, those comrades I had found for the first time in my life, all I was thinking about was my own survival”

“I've told you before, I find it a very brave thing to do. You could've just run away the next time you were on leave – that would've been just as understandable – but you didn't. You found the only chance that might give you a future and you took it after you had lasted two years – _two years, Thomas_ – without dying or going mad. You walked in Hell every day but you never surrendered to it. Most soldiers, however much they talked about going home for teatime like nothing ever happened, were fully prepared to die – I know I was – but you, you were defiant and actually seriously thought about survival, not death. When you had survived, you didn't rest easy on that, you went on and helped other people … And you saved my life – have I ever told you?”

“No, you haven't … I don't think I was very effective. After all, you tried to … you know” The thought of Edward's suicide-attempt still plays like a scene in his head some days, although he hadn't seen any of it, back then.

“I did that, yes. Twice. And I was doing very badly for the better part of two years afterwards, but sometimes … sometimes I would hear your voice in the darkness and it would give me a spark of hope. Does that sound mad?”

“Not at all” Thomas thinks of the many times an image of Edward had struck him like lightning in the years following their unlikely encounter in a backwater hospital, albeit for other, regretful reasons. “I'm weirdly glad I could help you, after all”

“You helped me a great deal … After the injury, you were the first, and for a long time the only one – along with Lady Sybil, to a certain extent – to treat me like an actual person. Everyone else, while they weren't negligent, was very superficial. Of course they had to be, there were hundreds of wounded men at any one time, they couldn't get to know them all. But … I always felt especially left out. The medics seemed to talk casually to everyone else and the soldiers, well, the ones that weren't in excruciating pain anyway, talked to each other. And I could never be sure if anyone would actually be there when I spoke, so I waited, sitting alone in the dark … I just assumed it was because I was terrible to look at” In an unconscious gesture, Edward runs his fingers across his face, along the line of the bandage that had covered his ruined eyes.

“You were never that” Thomas softly kisses one of the scars that have remained. “But maybe it was painful for them to look at you. A perfect young man, shattered by the war”

“I was never perfect. But you might have a point. I was drowning in my own desperation and maybe they could see that … Then you came along and you were … different” The word evokes a special sort of nostalgia that makes them smile regardless of the pain of that time. It feels a bit like re-reading a novel when you know your favourite character is going to die. “Everyone else had abandoned me, but you ran towards me instead of away. Though I believed at the time that you were doing it because it was your job, that meant the world to me, even if it took me two years to notice”

“Funny thing is, that's exactly the reason why – to me – you stuck out of the crowd. You were so lonely and so sad. And I was so desperate to find someone I could actually help, after I'd just discovered I still had a heart. I could've gone the easy way and picked a guy who just needed some cheering up and someone to play cards with, but something drew me to you instead … and then, it felt like you were the first person to ever truly pay attention to me and you couldn't even see me. All those throw-away remarks I made just to say something suddenly seemed to have so much weight because you were listening so intently”

“I hung on to every word you said, didn't I? … That was my only connection to the real world. And that's probably why your voice came back to me so often later. While I was in prison or that mental hospital or living with my family afterwards, the memory of those kind and hopeful things you'd said helped me not to shut myself off from the world completely. It's why I eventually moved to London, because I thought I'd find someone like you again. I did find some friends and something to do, came to terms with the way I had to live – and all that thanks to the foundation of hope you had given me years before. And then you came and rescued me for good … So, thank you, my love”

“Truth be told, I have to thank you. It was a turning point in my life. The war had shaken me to the marrow of my bones and I was ready to become a better person given half a chance. You brought out the best in me, made me realise how good I could be, if I opened my heart to the world” There seems to be a pattern there, weaving through his whole life, that he could only be kind for a while after he'd been shocked and shaken. Luckily, they met after such a shock and it was both the best and the worst moment for them to encounter each other. If Edward hadn't been there, Thomas might never have truly rediscovered his caring heart and if Thomas hadn't been there, Edward wouldn't have had that spark of hope to help him through the following years. But at the same time, all hope was forsaken and a caring heart was broken and turned to ice once again. Had they met at some other point in their lives, though, there might have been no connection at all. “Of course, then, you were gone and I went back to the way I was before”

“I'm still sorry about how that turned out. They should have told you I was alive, at least. It makes me mad to this day to think about it. I don't question the fact that they had to send me away – if you take away the emotions, that was perfectly reasonable – but everything that happened around it was unnecessary”

“Good to know we can both hold a grudge for more than ten years” Thomas had developed a certain distrust in Dr. Clarkson after the whole unfortunate episode and it never got better. “Losing you was one of the worst moments of the whole war”

“Back then at the hospital, did you … feel … anything for me?” Edward sounds almost afraid of the question. But what does it matter now?

“I believe I did. I knew it was foolish, but I did” Thomas had pushed his feelings away back then, tried to be the friend Edward needed, instead of pining for something that would probably never happen and only cause him grief. It wasn't until later that he truly let himself fall in love with the idea of Edward, a fantasy built by his isolated mind in the cold nights at Downton, breaking his heart again every morning.

“Is that why you tried to tell me how you were different?”

“Part of it. And for some mad reason I also thought it might help you to know that it was possible to get through life without fitting in. The truth is, my courage left me halfway through” It's been a few years since Thomas felt any regret about that, but it's back now. “Of course I had no idea you were the same kind of different. If only I'd realised … But you didn't feel that way about me back then, did you?”

“I didn't. I liked you, as a friend, but that was it. My mind was too filled with the horror about my new situation to think about anything of the sort. And I'd lost my lover – quite some time before we met, but I'd never had time to grieve. I was convinced I'd never love again, not like I loved him” The familiar shadow of grief passes over his face.

“You've never really spoken about him …” Half of it is morbid curiosity, the other half is worry that Edward might not yet be over it.

“Why should I? It's in the past, it won't help to drag it up again …” But a part of him wants to, Thomas can tell. It has all been buried in his heart for so long, it's time to bring it into the light again and see if it still hurts. “He left me behind, you know. He signed up for the army while I was in Oxford and when I came home he stood at the station waiting for me in his uniform, ready to leave for the front the next day. There you go, _fait accompli_, and no way back … I begged him not to go just yet but David was a very honourable man, passionate about fighting for the cause and duty-bound once he'd agreed to it. He thought I'd be proud of him for volunteering and I was, I only wished he'd waited for me so we could go through everything together. Not going to war was never an option, for either of us … I signed up the next day, right after he'd left. That was the last time we saw each other. I lived in such terror in the weeks afterwards but also in hope that we'd soon be together again. Two days before I was supposed to go to France, I heard that he'd been killed” It still hurts, that much is obvious. Thomas can do nothing more than hold him close to assure him that his heart is in safe hands now. “Suicidal courage. That's what the other soldiers said about me. They had no idea I wasn't fighting for neither king nor country but for David, for revenge. And not just for him but also all the friends I'd already lost and continued to lose as it went on”

“That sounds like a heavy burden to bear” Thomas wishes he had something more meaningful to say but his mind has a head of its' own and is circling around the way Edward still speaks of David like he is a great hero to be worshipped. Edward, like Thomas, has a way of seeing people he loves in a cloud of light that erases all their faults. David's fault, in this instance, being loving honour and possibly glory more than he loved Edward.

“It was. And when I was injured … it felt like I'd failed them. And along with the sadness and the fear that came with losing my livelihood, it made me angry with myself. In retrospect, maybe it was a good thing after all that we were separated back then”

“Why do you say that?”

It's been a while since he saw such a dark look on Edward's face. “I was behaving terribly after the war and the time in prison; I know that now. I'd been feeling numb before but suddenly I had a horrible temper, was a danger to myself and others. They were glad to get rid of me at the mental hospital, they nagged my parents until they relented and took me home. As soon as I got there, I refused to take the pills they had given me to keep me quiet. When I wasn't throwing things or yelling at people, innocent or otherwise, I was feeling empty, like a living corpse. For days on end, I wouldn't eat or sleep or even speak … I'm glad you didn't see me like that”

“Hearing you say that makes me want to go back in time, take you by the hand and pull you out of those shadows” Thomas _had_ seen him like that, just after the injury, depressed, furious, terrified, all of that held together by a fraying band of pride, a weak seam of defiance and a stain of guilt. What he had also seen was a man, regardless of his own situation, asking about any news from the soldiers he'd fought with, worrying about their welfare and that of those sharing a room with him. Thomas had seen his bravery even then and how there was a smile for everyone in him.

“That's a lovely thought. But I believe it was important that I pulled myself out. When I went to London, I _had to_ learn patience, had to find a way back to the person I was before the war, in a way, and adapt that person to the situation” He says it without bitterness; Thomas wonders if he actually feels some sense of achievement, too.

“But you were all alone” It is another reminder of the magnitude of Edward's inner strength.

“For a while. Until I had changed enough, become a person I could actually live with being. That's when I finally found friends and things brightened up just enough to be desolate but not hopeless. I stopped actively wanting to kill myself, though every time I crossed the road I still imagined how welcome it would be if I was hit by a bus … And still I often heard your voice in my head, I hear it to this day. Of course you wouldn't remember what you said to me back then”

“Try me. I have a good memory” And every minute of the short time he'd spent with Lieutenant Edward Courtenay is engraved in it.

“You said a great many things that helped me in the long-run but one phrase stuck with me in particular: You're not a victim, don't let them make you into one …”

“That's what I said to you the day I read your mother's letter out. When I tried to tell you I was different. We held hands, like we'd made a pact, until one of the nurses came along” Their joint hands seemed to be the only bit of warmth in that cold world.

“I never forgot that. You told me to take control of my life and more than two years later, I finally listened”

“I wish I'd also listened to my own advice … It's strange how my life took the completely opposite direction. Apart from a short time when I was broke and unemployed, I did pretty well after the war, judging by my life's standards. Of course I only see that now, when I look back. My darkest times occurred later, a while before we met again … But now that I think about it, I too am glad that you didn't see me as that mean, jealous person I used to be. Although a part of me still believes that I wouldn't have been such a bad person if I'd had a friend like you” Contrary to Edward, Thomas feels a great deal of bitterness, but he doesn't let it get the better of him anymore.

“Just that I was useless as a friend back then. Whatever your feelings for me, you couldn't have been with me. I wouldn't have let you. Or maybe I would have let you be my remedy, at your expense, until you couldn't take it anymore and we'd have parted ways, more hurt than before”

In their low opinion of themselves, they'd have made quite a match. “You underestimate my willpower. Once I'm attached to someone, I look past everything”

“Is that so? Do I want to know what you're looking past right now?”, Edward says in such a deadpan tone, Thomas isn't sure if he's joking or not.

“Oh, no, that's not what I meant at all”, he counters, just to make sure.

“Relax, I'm only teasing … You just said that I was all alone, like it shocked you, but weren't you just as alone after the war as I was? Or did you have a friend back then we've never talked about?”

“Lady Sybil. In a way, at least … We only spoke about the war and the hospital very few times but it helped a great deal to know that there was someone who understood me. When we looked at each other across the dinner-table or met in the gardens, both lost in thought, there was a bridge between our worlds … Strangely enough, that didn't happen with Mr. Crawley, the only person in the house who'd actually stood on the battlefield. The only time we ever connected was in the trenches, right before I was wounded. We never acknowledged that again between us” These two were some of the unlikeliest connections he had made during that time.

“Lady Sybil was truly special, wasn't she?”

It hurts about as much to think about her as it hurts to think about the war. “She was. When she died, it was like a million candles went out and the whole world could feel her loss … She liked you, you know, and saw your potential for becoming the man you are now”

“I wish I'd known her better … Imagine what we could've done, the three of us together. Throw in that revolutionary husband of hers and we could've started a political movement and conquered the Great Social Divide” This time, he is joking, although there is a pinch of truth in it.

“You do have crazy ideas. We would certainly have had enough willpower, the four of us” Where on earth does he get those ideas?

“Oh, yes. And weren't we an example of equality on all levels? An English lady with a proper job, an Irish socialist driving aristocrats around, a free-spirited former servant with ambitions and me, a homosexual catholic with nothing but a name. Everything seemed possible after the war. It changed those things, to a certain degree. I'm still not sure if it changed anything else for the better …”

“Some day we'll know. It's strange, isn't it, to think that what happened and what we did is now history. How this or that stretch of muddy field is suddenly a famous place that you can mention and people will nod and speak like they know everything about it although they weren't there. And while we were there it felt like it would never end. I suppose people never feel it when they're part of history happening. And in the end it's all numbers and dates and some day children will learn about them in school like we learned about Napoleon or the Glorious Revolution” Thomas had got his hands on an old wartime newspaper once and it felt so surreal to read a report on things he'd actually been a part of.

“Some day, everyone who remembers the people and the stories behind the numbers will be dead of old age. There'll be no-one who can speak about the sounds or the feelings, let alone the smell, of the battlefield. It'll all be coming from the pages of a history book and they won't be able to imagine that that was what our lives consisted of – mud, noise, dead bodies all around and us surviving from one dawn to the next”

“There might one day be another war like this one if there is no-one left who can warn them of the horrors” It is no use trying to pretend they can stop the progress of time.

“There certainly will be. People have always been at war with each other, for whatever reasons. I just hope, for their sakes, that it will be over quickly this time … Then again, it wasn't all bad, even if that's a sick thing to say” And this coming from Edward …

“No, it wasn't. I didn't only meet you, but also a lot of other interesting people I never would have crossed paths with. In a way, it made the world a smaller place or maybe it enlarged the horizons of my own world … Did I ever tell you I met a gurkha? He was a curious type, untouched somehow, like he lived in another sphere of existence. And it made me think … How is he my brother in arms when he couldn't be more different and all those men who are so much alike are enemies? Then I realized, no matter if we're from England, Nepal or Germany, we're all people, we all have families and friends, we're all afraid and hungry and cold” Thomas had never been much of a nationalist and the war had made him even less so.

Luckily, Edward thinks the same way. “The only thing that divides us are other people's politics. Yes, a lot of soldiers, including myself, thought so. And that brought the men fighting under the same banner together and made them forget class and social status. Of course it could never go back to the way it was before”

“It couldn't, however much the upper classes wanted it to … But then there was the way soldiers were treated afterwards. So many of them were left begging because talking about them being heroes was all good and well but giving a disabled man a job was quite a different story” It is still a source of indignation and Thomas still hates himself a little for standing idly by as this happened to others, for fear of drawing attention to himself.

“You're right. I always thought I was extremely lucky compared to other so-called invalids, but I had to face no small amount of prejudice” Edward, being the way he is, had fought it successfully but it is a scary thought indeed to imagine how many hadn't.

“Even I had to deal with that at times. At Downton, no-one cared about the hole in my hand or the glove, but I did get strange looks and snide remarks in other places. People with bigger, more obvious injuries probably had a lot more of that. And some people noticed the vast number of men returning home with holes in their non-dominant hands and came to the conclusion that it was a sure sign of bailing out from the front” It was also a constant reminder of the things that had taken place, like the darkness in front of his eyes must be for Edward.

“Maybe. Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if more men had bailed out on both sides or if they had simply refused to fight like this, following a strategy that required them to run unprotected towards machine-guns, just to satisfy some abstract idea of nationality or power”

“You think it would've ended sooner? I doubt that. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of men ready to knowingly run to their deaths for what we all considered honour”

They drink the rest of their wine in silence while over the ocean, the setting sun breaks through the clouds and sets the sky ablaze like a grenade-blast lingering in the fabric of time between two seconds.

“We really are lucky”, Thomas says, “We may have paid a high price for it, but we are. We're alive and settled and happy. When the clock struck ten years ago, I wouldn't have dared dream of a life like this”

“We were nothing in the eyes of society back then; an invalid and a coward, a servant and a disgraced heir. We needed time to heal and come into our own”

Thomas puts his hand on Edward's knee, mirroring that moment in the hospital so long ago. “You're the most able invalid I've ever met”

Smiling, Edward takes his hand. “And you're the bravest coward”


End file.
